180-Gallon Upgrade Starts NOW!!!

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pat8you said:
Very jealous that you got to go to the tyree coral show. His coral is amazing looking. There are a ton of nice places out in California. I've heard thats where most of the coral shipments come in from over seas and that's why so much of the best stuff ends up out there.
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Ya, it was pretty cool. I actually bought the pieces from Tyree himself, so there is no question if they are real LE or not. I think his next "Coral Farmers Market" is in Dallas. But you are right about the California thing, definitely an advantage for us. I think the best LFS out here for coral is vividaquariums, you may know them from online purchasing. The coral shows are the always the most fun and have the best deals. The next one we have here is reef-a-palooza in October.
I wish I could take pictures of my new coral, but ever since switching to the radiums, all my pictures turn out blue. I need to figure out if my little POS camera has a white balance.
 
Thanks for the heads up Cccapt, if he is there I will listen to him speak. Is he talking about reef lighting? I know they will have other known names in the reef world speaking too, I can't wait.
 
I up graded my protein skimmer in a big way as you can see below. This is the SWC 1A Cone skimmer. This new skimmer will be "over-skimming" my tank as it is rated for tanks from 400-700 gallons. It has a Laguna/Askoll based pump which are known be be silent beasts. I am going to sell the skimmer on the left if anybody is interested it is rated up to 150-gallons.
img_1034392_0_e8641b21aa9b3a92b17f2c6b2d0d0b7e.jpg
 
Most recent update.... I was woken up to my wife shouting from downstairs, "Baaaabe, one of your fish jumped out of the tank." My first thought was the yellow wrasse, then I yelled down, "which one." She responded, "Marley." which is what she named the Watcman Goby. Thats too bad, he ended up being a cool fish and cleaned the heck out of my sand. The crazy/sad thing is, he ended up about 6-feet away from the tank. Either my dog found him first, or he flopped around that far. It's sad to think he drowned and even more sad to think how many fish we buy which were pulled out of the ocean only to die very shortly afterwards.
 
Sorry to hear that. Gobies are so neat.

The thing I can't get over is how he was so near the top unless he was chased. The watchman just stays at the bottom. Who is the likely bully in the tank?
 
austinsdad said:
Sorry to hear that. Gobies are so neat.

The thing I can't get over is how he was so near the top unless he was chased. The watchman just stays at the bottom. Who is the likely bully in the tank?
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I know it is very weird. Nobody messed with him at all and it happened at night. I could possibly have been the bully. I was under then tank with my flashlight that night checking out the skimmer. The light shined for a second in the tank, but opposite side which the goby sleeps and I think opposite side it jumped.... who knows.
 
fishmonkey said:
wow! that is one HECK of a protein skimmer! WOW! talk about over skimming!
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Thanks! I am overskimming a lot especially since my bioload is pretty small for a 180-gallon tank. Here are some pictures of how it is working below. The first pic is 5-days worth of skimmate, then I decided to make it little wetter, the last pic is from only 1-day.
A lot has happened since I last posted. I also took my VHO actinics out and added 1-60" T5HO with an individual reflector and and Aquablue bulb. I wanted something which directed more usable light for the coral, so this was my choice since the VHOs I had didn't have any reflector whatsoever.
I also a battled a bad case of Valonia (Bubble Algae) and finally beat it with the addition of lots of a certain type of hermet crab, about 6-Emerald crabs, a Scribbled Rabbitfish and a couple hours of scraping the rocks one Saturday morning.
Some new corals I added lately are the Tyree LE Royal Plum, Tyree LE 20k Leagues Lokani and ORA Tri-Color Valida

img_1050551_0_8a999a1765aadbd9829f13ee5ef871bc.jpg


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austinsdad said:
Does your skimmer have an overflow in the collection area? A tube to an empty milk jug would do the trick.
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Yes it does have a "nipple" which I can unplug and hook up a hose which came with the skimmer which can lead into a milk jug. But I am not using that yet, I just tuned it back to skim drier, so it fills up in about 1-week.
 
They are looking good. Is the pink lemonade from ATL?

You might want to move them away from each other a little more. They look pretty close. I did the same thing and as the corals grew I had to move them.
 
ccCapt said:
They are looking good. Is the pink lemonade from ATL?

You might want to move them away from each other a little more. They look pretty close. I did the same thing and as the corals grew I had to move them.
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Thanks ccCapt! No, the Pink Lemonade is the Tyree/Reeffarmers version. I really like this one because it holds a very vibrant yellow and is not turning green on me. The polyps are nice and pink. The PL and the Red Planet are a little close, but as of now the RP is tabling away from the PL. We'll see what happens as they get bigger. I may have to eventually move them like you said.
 
I have made more equipment upgrades in the past few weeks. I purchased two dosing pumps for alk/cal. I also I purchased a controller to automatically dose alk/cal, turn my heater on/off, turn my fans on if the tank gets to a certain temp etc etc etc. This is the one I got: http://www.reefgeek.com/manufacture..._Lab_pH_&_Temp_Probe_&_EB8_by_Neptune_Systems

I also upgraded my ATO by simply adding a AquaLifter and some airline tubing going into a 5-gallon jug.

I also installed the addition of two more fans.

One nice thing about this is that it helps to automate my system and keep it more stable. After all stability is key to the success of sps.

I have pictures of this stuff, I'll try to post later. I got my wife a new camera for Christmas and we havent installed the software yet. I'm glad she wanted a new camera, because now I can take way better pictures of my coral and fish....just don't tell her that.
 
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